It’s Not Your Living Room, Dear
I worked in a small, one-screen theater. Due to only having one screen, we would only show one movie at a time. Our typical schedule featured one or two movies per weeknight, and then four or five showings on the weekends. This meant that we would be rotating through our list of releases during the week, and not every movie that was “currently showing” would actually be played on a given night.
Enter Miss Demanding. I never actually learned her name, but I did see her often enough to recognize her face. She would show up at least once every other week, if not more often, and have some variation of the following conversation at the ticket counter.
Miss Demanding: “What are you showing?”
Employee: “We are playing [Movie] now, and we will be playing [Second Movie] at nine.”
Miss Demanding: “Hmm… I wanted to see [Third Movie].”
Employee: “[Third Movie] is showing on [Weekday] at six, or on [Weekend] at three.”
Miss Demanding: “Hmm… I was hoping to see it tonight.”
Employee: “Sorry, we aren’t playing it tonight. If you’d like, I can call my manager, and she can sell you an advanced ticket that you can use to see it on either of the showtimes this week.”
Miss Demanding: “Hmm… I’m here now, and I wanted to see [Third Movie] tonight.”
This would go around in circles until either the employee used the following approach, or, for the newbies who weren’t confident enough to do that, the manager was called over and did it for them.
Manager: “I’m sorry, ma’am. [Third Movie] will not be shown tonight. You can come see it when it is playing. I can help the next person in line.”
And then they would simply repeat the above and otherwise ignore Miss Demanding until she left.
Every time she came, she would always ask after a movie that wasn’t actually playing, obviously having paid attention to the schedule, as even when we didn’t answer her about what was showing now and simply asked what she was hoping to see, she’d still end up naming a movie that wasn’t actually playing. And it wasn’t like it was a big secret what was playing each night, as we had a massive marquee that we would post the movies for the night on, which was clearly visible as you approached the theater.
To this day, I’m still not sure what, exactly, she hoped to accomplish with this, aside from maybe expecting us to simply change out the movie on no notice, just for her.
Question of the Week
Tell us about the worst boss/manager you’ve ever had!
